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A UPS cargo plane slammed into a field and burst into flames near an Alabama airport Wednesday, killing the pilot and co-pilot and strewing debris for hundreds of yards, authorities said.

The plane, an Airbus A300-600F, was en route from Louisville when it crashed on approach to Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.

National Transportation Safety Board member Robert Sumwalt said the plane's data-recording "black boxes" have not yet been recovered because they are located in a portion of the aircraft wreckage, the tail section, that was still smoldering. He said he was optimistic they would be recovered when the wreckage cools.

"The board has a very good success rate at being able to recover the recorders," Sumwalt said.

Sumwalt said the plane, carrying tail number N155UP, crashed while on approach to Runway 18.

"We will be looking at everything that may be relevant to the causation of this accident,'' he said.

Birmingham Fire Chief Ivor Brooks said both crewmembers were pronounced dead at the scene. The pilot and co-pilot were the only people aboard the plane, company spokesman Jeff Wafford said.

UPS said in a statement that it "cannot disclose their names pending confirmation from the local coroner's office.''

Birmingham Mayor William Bell told USA TODAY that the pilots sent no distress signal before the crash. No one on the ground was injured, he said, although debris was found on roofs and lawns of homes a half-mile from the crash site.

"Debris is everywhere,'' Bell said. "It took tremendous effort by the men and women of the police and fire departments to put the fire out and take control of the scene."

The crash happened at about 5 a.m. local time on an overcast morning with occasional light rain. The plane apparently struck a massive tree north of the runway and clipped some power lines, knocking out power to much of the surrounding neighborhood.

"At first I thought it was thunder," he said. "The power went off, and I looked out the window and saw nothing but fire."

Evans said that he was grateful that the plane had not hit any homes. "We've been trying to get the airport to buy up the rest of these houses for years," he said.

Barbara Benson, 72, said she was awakened from sleep at the time of the crash by "this big sonic boom."

"I saw a big red flash through my bedroom window," she said. She said the tops of trees around her house were knocked down and a piece of their deck was missing.

"This incident is very unfortunate, and our thoughts and prayers are with those involved," UPS Airlines President Mitch Nichols said in a statement. "We place the utmost value on the safety of our employees, our customers and the public. We will immediately engage with the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation, and we will work exhaustively on response efforts."

Flight tracking site flightaware.com shows the cargo plane, identified by the site and the FAA as Flight UPS1354, dropped more than 9,000 feet over the course of two minutes about four minutes before the crash.

The plane is listed by the FAA as an Airbus A300 F4-622R manufactured in 2004. The FAA lists six "service difficulty" incidents for the plane since then. The most recent was in May 2012 when the aircraft's air data computer failed during a flight and an emergency was declared.

The computer, which was listed as inoperative, was replaced and the plane was put back into service, FAA data shows.

The other incidents, which date to 2006, involved a faulty brake pressure indicator, a damaged floor panel, a malfunction of the plane's trailing edge flap system, a malfunctioning crew entrance door, and damaged fuselage skin.

UPS is the world's largest package delivery company and owns 235 jets, according to UPS spokeswoman Natalie Godwin. The company operates 949 flights in the USA and 982 international flights daily, serving 381 airports in the U.S. and 346 internationally.

In 2012, UPS delivered 4.1 billion packages and documents worldwide, Godwin said. The company daily delivers an average of 16.3 million packages and documents, including 2.3 million that go by air.

Godwin said the last UPS plane crash was in Sept. 3, 2010, when a UPS Boeing 747-400 crashed near the Dubai airport in the United Arab Emirates. Both crewmembers — Capt. Doug Lampe, 48, of Kentucky, and First Officer Matthew Bell, 38, of Florida — were killed. It was the first fatal plane crash for UPS.

An investigation of the Dubai crash found that the plane's cargo, which included lithium batteries, caught fire, forcing the pilots to try and return to the Dubai airport shortly after takeoff. Investigators cited the lithium batteries as a possible cause of the fire.

A report in July on the UAE's General Civil Aviation Authority's accident investigation of the crash said "the investigation concludes with reasonable certainty that the location of the fire was in an element of the cargo that contained, among other items, lithium batteries."

Before the Dubai crash, UPS had had four other aircraft accidents or incidents since 1985, according to the Aviation Safety Network. The most recent was in February 2006 when a DC-8 with a fire onboard burned after landing in Philadelphia.

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A postal officer inspects the debris at the scene of a United Parcel Service cargo plane crash near Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport on Aug. 14 in Birmingham, Ala. Two crew members were killed when the aircraft crashed on a hill at 5 a.m. near the airport.
Hal Yeager, AP

Debris and cargo is scattered across a hill near the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. The UPS cargo plane crashed in an open field around 5 a.m. as it was arriving from Louisville.
Butch Dill, AP